Vampire Star's 'Gentle' Bite Captured in New Images

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The best images yet of a vampire star siphoning material from its
stellar companion have been captured by combining the powers of
multiple telescopes at a European observatory in Chile.

The light from four telescopes at the European Southern
Observatory's
Paranal Observatory was joined to create the new images of
the double star system. From these observations, astronomers
found that the active transfer of mass from one star to the other
in this system is gentler than they expected.

By harnessing light from the different telescopes that make up
the Very Large Telescope (VLT), the astronomers were able to scan
a portion of the sky 427 feet (130 meters) across with vision 50
times sharper than the venerable Hubble
Space Telescope, according to officials at the European
Southern Observatory.

"We can now combine light from four VLT telescopes and create
super-sharp images much more quickly than before," study lead
author Nicolas Blind, of the Institut de Planetologie et
d'Astrophysique de Grenoble in France, said in a statement. "The
images are so sharp that we can not only watch the stars orbiting
around each other, but also measure the size of the larger of the
two stars." [ Video:
Star-Sucker Caught in the Act ]

The unusual double star system, called SS Leporis, lies in the
constellation of Lepus (The Hare), and consists of a red giant
star orbiting a hotter companion.

Red giants are swollen stars that have begun to exhaust their
hydrogen fuel and are nearing their eventual demise.

The two stars of SS Leporis circle each other every 260 days and
are separated by little more than the distance between Earth and
the sun, the astronomers said. The larger and cooler star of the
pair extends to about a quarter of this distance, which is
roughly equivalent to the orbit of Mercury.

The new images are so sharp that they have enabled astronomers to
measure the
red giant star more accurately than ever before. Since the
stars are so close to one another, the hotter companion has
already cannibalized about half of the mass of the red giant, the
researchers explained.

"We knew that this double star was unusual, and that material was
flowing from one star to the other," said study co-author Henri
Boffin, of the European Southern Observatory. "What we found,
however, is that the way in which the mass transfer most likely
took place is completely different from previous models of the
process. The 'bite' of the
vampire star is very gentle but highly effective."

The new observations show that the red giant star is actually
smaller than was previously thought, which makes it more
difficult to explain how this star lost matter to its companion,
the astronomers said. To readjust their theory, the researchers
now think that matter must be ejected from the giant star as
stellar wind that is captured by the hotter companion, rather
than simply streaming from one star to the other.

"These observations have demonstrated the new snapshot imaging
capability of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer," study
co-author Jean-Philippe Berger said. "They pave the way for many
further fascinating studies of interacting double stars."

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